up in his hands and thrown them out the window without getting stung. i am sure he trafficked with the devil. but i am sorry i let him go. "the black magic of barney haller." that's "countdown." portions written by james thurber. "the rachel maddow show" is up next. i'm keith olbermann. good night and good luck. you know that metaphor when people say something doesn't pass the smell test? in the bp oil disaster era it's no longer a metaphor. smell tests for real. trained smell testers monitoring america's seafood supply. as technology continues to appear to go backwards, politics goes forward, at least for democrats. as conservatives commit themselves to a disastrous, renewed embrace of the oil

industry. >> i apologize. >> i think that joe barton before he apologized had a legitimate point. >> plus a right wing senate candidate emerges from her heidi hole in conservative only media and accidently comes into contact, disastrous contact, with a real reporter. >> where are you getting these questions? senator debby stabenow of michigan joins us andç "the washington post"'s ezra klein and a real life smell test earl ahead as "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. good evening. happy friday night. what would you do if you were just sitting at home and somebody pulled up and parked their truck right in your front yard? they just pulled up, left their truck on your front lawn? what would your first instinct be? before you answer, listen to what dick armey thinks you would do. >> if i go park my truck on

your -- your yard and you don't call the mayor, you call your lawyer and you say we'll settle this in the courts. >> who calls their lawyer if somebody parks on their lawn? seriously. think about this. somebody parks their truck on your yard, on your lawn, maybe you'd call the police and ask them to get the truck towed away? no, dick armey says if you're a normal, red-blooded american you'd call your lawyer and you'd say, hey, lawyer, there's a truck on my lawn. let's figure out who owns that truck and see if we can sue them. in what universe would that be your first recourse? your first reaction? so strange. dick armey brought this up as a means of explaining his objections to the government getting bp to set up a fund to pay the victims of the bp oil spill. this weird analogy is how he explained his frustration about that. >> if i go park my truck on your -- your -- your yard and you don't call the mayor, you call your lawyer and you say, we'll settle this in the courts.

and so on. so the point that i have is by what constitutional authority does the president of the united states say, i will decide what redress will be made to the victims of this catastrophe by this firm. and i will decide who are the victims and who are not the victims. that, the constitution doesn't give that authority to the executive branch. >> so the government negotiates a great deal for the victims of the bp oil disaster. the government gets bp to hand over a ton of money to compensate the company's victims in this disaster, and conservatives having never really minded the whole executive overreach thing under george w. bush, conservatives, with this deal, decide they hatç it. they just can't stand it but they are having a very hard time articulating why they hate it exactly. hence the bizarre truck on the lawn analogy. they can't exactly explain why it just makes them feel bad. now it's possible that this is

just obama derangement syndrome, that obama did it and therefore it must be bad. that's possible. maybe it's not just that. maybe it's something else. there are two sides to this deal after all. the government asked for this fund of money. it is bp who had to give up the money when they agreed to it. so it's also possible that it's not just obama derangement syndrome. maybe these guys also feel bad for bp. dick armey isn't exactly a stranger to the oil inland. the website think progress revealed last month that dick armey's freedom works was part of bp's five-year plan to try to get protected waters off the coast of florida opened to new offshore drilling. dick armey's freedom works was helping to try to make that happen for the oil industry. conveniently freedom works doesn't disclose their funders. yes, maybe it's obama derangement syndrome but it also could be that these guys are like this with the oil industry and they don't like to see oil companies have to pay even when an oil company causes the biggest environmental disaster in u.s. history. take joe barton for example.

republican congressman from texas who has turned out to be the man of the week in american politics. as a result of this remarkable moment yesterday. >> i think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what i would characterize as a shakedown, in this case a $20 billion shakedown. i apologize. i do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong is subject to some sort of political pressure that is, again, in my words amounts to a shakedown. so i apologize. >> that is the face of the republican party on the energy issue. he is the ranking house republican on energy. joe barton apologizing to the ceo of bp not once but twice. apologizing because the federal

government got bp to set aside money for victims of their oil disaster. joe barton later retracted that apology and said he hadç been misconstrued-led. if anything i said this morning has been misconstrued, in an opposite effect, i want to apologize for that misconstrue -- misconstruction. >> congressman barton has been in congress since 1985. before joe barton was elected to congress according to his own website he worked for the oil industry, a natural gas decontrol consultant for atlantic richfield oil and gas company better known as arco. which is now of course part of bp. so conservatives and conservative politicians may just be predisposed to dislike what the president does because the president does it and they don't like this president but they're also really tight with the oil industry. and on day 60 of the bp oil disaster it turns out that is a lot more politically important than it was 61 days ago.

well, everyone got very upset about joe barton's blunt expression of his pity for bp, how much he identifies with them against the interests of americans who are harmed by what bp did. what is sort of being overlooked is that what joe barton expressed is a pretty main stream conservative sentiment right now. >> i think that joe barton before he apologized had a legitimate point. >> the president is directly engaged in extorting money from a company. this is like general motors and chrysler where the administration basically stole money. >> barton made a courageous statement in my judgment to have anyone stand up and even indirectly defend them and say they were the victim of a shakedown shows political courage. >> congressional democrats said they wanted bp to set aside $20 billion? if the government is in charge of this i want to know who's going to get it. who is going to get this money? union activists? acorn people?

who is going to get this monday sni. >> this is an appointee from the obama administration who will be doing the payouts. let's just make sure that this isn't a permanent atm card. >> by what constitutional authority does the president of the united states say i will decide what redress will be made to the victims of this catastrophe by this firm? and i will decide who are the victims and who are not the victims. that, the constitution doesn't give that authority to the executive branch. >>ç mid term election season starts right now. that reel of comments we just played could essentially be the democratic party's campaign ad for november. any democratic candidate's campaign ad for 2010. the conservative movement and republicans are lining up with bp and against the government trying to get bp to pay the victims of this disaster. not metaphorically, not an extrapolation from what they're doing. it's directly what they're doing. and the remarkable news here is not that republicans have this

big political weakness or that they're accidently showing it in this very blunt way. the really remarkable and frankly almost unbelievable development here is that democrats appear to have noticed. democrats for once in their lives appear to be capitalizing on republicans making this huge political error. new ads have already been cut by michele bachmann's democratic opponent in minnesota and by the democratic national committee. >> it's bp's fault and they should pay. but michele bachmann calls making bp pay for the cleanup extortion and said if i was the head of bp, i would let the signal get out there we're not going to be chumps. if bachmann lets bp off the hook, guess who's paying? us. >> i'm ashamed of what happened in the white house yesterday. i think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to

what i would characterize as a shakedown. >> he personally wanted to apologize to mr. hayward saying he found it shameful, what happened at the white house yesterday. >> i apologize. >> and it's not just those democratic ads. it's also organizing for america, the outgrowth of barack obama's presidential campaign machine blasting out this open letter yesterday called no apologies, an attempt to essentially react investigate the obama electorate around this issue. this is what it looks like when democrats realize they've got a political opportunity. this is them seizing that opportunity. but to what end? is this just pointing out that republicans have taken a really toxic position on oil and energy? is this just pointing this out and laughing at them and hoping to raise some money off of it or will democrats try to turn this into concrete political gains, either electorally or in terms of policy? check out this report from "the hill" newspaper today. senate liberals threaten rebellion onç energy bill. yes, that means their own energy bill.

senate liberals threatening to vote against the energy bill if it gets watered down. if putting a price on carbon gets taken out of the legislation. they are drawing a line in the sand and saying if we're going to move on energy we're going to do something important. no watering it down. liberals in other words are saying they have the political capital here on the issue of energy. liberals have it. conservatives have the opposite of political capital on this. so progressives and democrats should use it. use it once. use it for once. use it. to pass a no compromise bill. they're actually making that case right now. pinch me. joining us now maybe to pinch me is ezra klein staff writer for "the washington post" and an msnbc contributor. hi, ezra. nice to see you. >> good evening. >> are you going to pinch me? are you going to tell me i should wake up and realize this isn't really happening? >> well, i'm going to stay back here on that. but it is happening. the question is how far it'll go. it's a couple of liberals right

now and it's important. i mean, the big thing about energy, right, and the big thing about global warming policy, is that bp and the gulf show that there are sort of different types of issues we need to solve in american life. health care reform, the deficit, if you don't do it right the first time come back the next year, the year after that, ten years after that, 20 years after that. then there are things like the gulf oil spill and if you get it wrong you don't have the technical capacity to undo it. climate change is one of those. if we let it happen, if the earth's temperature raises seven degrees centigrade we don't know what to do. we don't even know what will happen. we've only got one of these planets so there is a real difference in this and i think the liberals aren't just seeing political opportunity but policy reality. and the fact that something seems difficult in a big legislative lift in congress, they don't feel that exempts them from trying. >> ezra, you posted a tom tolls cartoon today on your blog at "the washington post." it says year 2060 the search for a breakthrough technology to solve climate change continues. and then the scientist says,

it's a time machine we hope will take us back 50 years to 2010 when we should have put a price on carbon. obviously tom toles is a genius. but is a price on carbon really what it al boils down to? if we don't get that in an energy bill is everything else in your view sort of just tinkering around on theç margi? >> a price on carbon is the single most important thing we need to do. not that everything else is tinkering around the margins. we want investment into clean energy such that we can hopefully get the sort of technological breakthroughs we'll need to get through this problem and we need to have regulations that deal with coal fired power plants and other elements. but at the end of the day if we don't do the price on carbon doing this any other way is going to be wasting an enormous amount of money. what a price on carbon does is when we go to the gas station or to buy electricity or use energy at all it forces the energy to cost what it will really cost us in the long run once these things like global warming are factored in. when it does that other things like solar, wind, they become

somewhat cheaper in comparison and we begin to use them and we begin to innovate around them and move towards them. we can do that just by funneling $600 billion a year to renewable energies. we could pay every american 10,000 bucks to put a solar panel on their roof. but it's a dumb way to spend taxpayer money. what we should do is use the market as conservatives frequently tell us and price things relative to their actual, not only value, but actual cost to us as a society. and that's what the carbon price will do. sacrificing it is essentially wasting our money for no good reason. >> ezra klein staff writer for "the washington post", thank you for your time tonight, ezra, and your clarity on an issue that is often really bam booze ling. thanks a lot. >> thank you. coming up next smell testing gulf coast seafood. not metaphorical smell testing but actual smell testing. that's how we test it turns out. humans smell and taste it. that story next. and how to silence a single musical instrument that

apparently makes people very upset. there is a way to banish the sound of that instrument. we will show you how to do it ahead. please stay with us. okay, class, our special guest is here -- ellen page. hi, ellen! hi, ellen! hi, ellen! hi, ellen! we're going on a field trip to china! wow. [ chuckles ] when i was a kid, we -- we would just go to the -- the farm. [ cow moos ] [ laughter ] no, seriously, where are you guys going? ni hao! ni hao! ni hao! ni hao! ni hao! ni hao! ni hao! ni hao! ni hao! ni hao! ni hao! ni hao! [ female announcer ] the new classroom. see it. live it. share it. on the human network. cisco. for over 25 yes, in test afr test, vil has been shown be safe and effective when ten as directed. for relief you can trust, reach for adl.

today bp announced its ceo tony hayward is heading back to england. gulf coast responsibility gets handed off to bp's managing director. bye, mr. hayward. hope you get your life back. doubt you will. bp also announced that their relief well is within 200 feet of the blown out well. where i come from 200 feet is nothing. of course i don't come from a mile beneath the sea where temperature and pressure levels warp all reasonable expectations about physics and mechanics so potential relief from a relief well is still a ways off but, still, they're getting closer. we'll take good news where we can find it. ♪ i mean like, oh, my gosh ♪ i'm so in love --

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i was riding the train back from d.c. to new york today and i did something i never do. i read the newspaper on paper. i do everything online. i haven't picked up an actual print newspaper in years. but today i was very much loving amtrak and enjoying drinking my coffee and eating my bagel and reading my print copy of "the washington post" when i ruined everything by snorting my coffee right out of my nose onto the print copy of the paper. when i came across a q & a in the paper with one of our former guests who i met in louisiana, dr. edward overton at lsu. "the post" asks him and another expert professor ian mcdonald from florida state about various scientific things about the bp oil disaster. here's where i snorted the coffee, just the last question of the q & a. question, what efforts are being

made to detect contamination in seafood from the gulf? answer, dr. overton, there is no fishing or harvesting in a large area that has been affected by the oil. of course, fish can swim in and out of that zone so the zone of no fishing is much larger than the actual oil area. then the catch is inspected rigorously by oreganoleptic testing which is a fancy science word for taste and smell. a selected portion is undergoing chemical analysis. then professor mcdonald says, there are tasters trained to find seafood contamination. taste can detect hydro carbons in the parts per million range. that's how we're testing the seafood for contamination. smell tests. 60 sniffers/tasters have been trained so far in seafood sensory testing by the international food protection training institute and noaa's fishery service at the national seafood inspection lab in

mississippi. apparently there is chemical testing as well but there is no machine better suited for this task of detecting minute amounts of oil in seafood and shell fish than the trained human palate. please tell me more. joining us now is the executive director for the international food protection training institution. thank you very much for your time. >> thank you, rachel. >> so to be clear you're not just finding people who have supernatural smelling and tasting abilities and putting them on the case. you're training regular folks to be able to detect contamination, is that right? >> that's absolutely correct. really it's the training, you can almost take anyone and put them through this training and it really emphasizes and gets them to think about how they can use what is already natural in them to do this. and so these folks from all the five gulf states that we're putting through this training

come from various agencies in those states and they don't do this every day for a living. they do other types of things whether fisheries people or food inspectors, and so a couple of quick days of going through this and going through the testing that they're put through, they come out with a lot of sensory memory. >> and do some people have a natural, more natural affinity for sniffing? do you find out after you do the training that there are some people who have like star noses? >> yeah, that's absolutely correct. a lot of the folks that are going through the training and we've put about 60 people through the training already in the last three weeks in order to increase the capacity of people out there that can do this, they come out of this as being screeners so they can go out now in their normal jobs and do a lot ofç screening and find problems that are out there or detect things that they couldn't before. but then there are, there's

additional training that can take place where they can become assessors, trained assessors or even experts at some point and that all depends on how good their god given talents are. >> in a nontraining environment once the folks who have been through your training are out in the field, how do they actually test the seafood? are they smelling, tasting, both? how much of a sample are they smelling or tasting at a time? >> well, one of the things they learn in the class is that the environment has to be controlled in, when you're doing this testing. so it's somewhat difficult when you're naught tout in the heat humidity and on a boat say when there are diesel fumes and a lot of odors. it's hard to do that. it's always encouraged to do that in a lab setting. sometimes that's not always possible but a lot of the assessments that are made or all of the assessments that are made in terms of opening and closing waters, that's taking place in a laboratory setting where a lot

of those environmental factors can be controlled. >> and you've got these incredibly well calibrated human testing machines alongside all of the mechanical ones which is how we all imagined this was done. fascinating stuff. the executive director for the international food protection training institute thank you for your time and good luck with this. before today nevada's republican senate candidate sharron angle had been tossed nothing but journalistic softballs by hand picked right wing talk show hosts. no more. we don't have the sound bite. thank you. what do you mean -- come on, you guys. really? we don't have the sound bite? i'm going to -- wow. that's awesome. hold on. what do you mean about second amendment remedies, sharron angle? we kept asking into the parking lot but received no answer. why won't you answer what second amendment remedy means? nothing at all. it's a simple question. senate candidate sharron angle has found that life outside her

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this has been one of those crazy weeks, a week when stuff you thought could never happen happened. i mean congressman joe barton apologized to bp and then unapologized and then said he'd been misconstruedled. sarah palin said she smoked marijuana and didn't like it. and the usa came back from two

goals down to tie slovenia in the world cup then totally got robbed on the third goal which got taken away from them. my favorite impossible becomes reality tale involves mr. impossible himself. illinois congressman and senate candidate mark kirk who has already distinguished himself by being caught telling at least ten different falsehoods about his military career. mr. kirk has claimed the navy named him intelligence officer of the year which did not happen. he also claimed that as a member of the naval reserve he survived live enemy fire in kosovo which never happened. in iraq, which never happened, and in kandahar, afghanistan where congressman kirk has told reporters it both happened and it didn't happen. mark kirk's untruthiness is amazing enough on its own terms. the guy is running for senate. but when he tries to explain away his untruthiness that's really when the magic happens. because the only thingç mark kk does with more piz as than making stuff up is trying to

explain away the stuff he is accused of making up. in this crazy week mark kirk managed to raise the bar on that. the "new york times" reporting there are serious questions about another part of mark kirk's resume. he claims to have taught nursery school, middle school, and high school though the times reports those engagements were very, very short-term things. mr. kirk says he taught the older kids during the 1982-83 school year in london at a private school called the milestone prep school. mr. kirk also says he worked in the nursery school of the forest home chapel in ithica, new york, during his last year of college in 1981. for the record, a chapel spokesperson tells "the times" that mr. kirk was, quote, never, ever considered a teacher. let's keep going. here's how congressman kirk described his career as an educator on the floor of the house a few years back. >> i served as a teacher and i remember the kids who were the brightest lights of our country's future. i also remember those who bore scrutiny as people who might

bring a gun to class. >> now, which of the kids he taught do you think mr. kirk remembered as threatening to show up in class with a gun? would it be the tiny tots in the church nursery, the 2, 3, and 4-year-olds? or would it be the teenagers in england? turns out he was blaming the tiny tots. those gun-toting rug rats. the "new york times" reports, quote, his spokeswoman said the congressman was referring to nursery school students in ithica, not his students in london during that speech on the house floor in 2006. mark kirk running for senate in part on the basis of his credentials as a former nursery school teacher even though the nursery school he says he worked at says he wasn't a teacher there and if we believe he was a teacher there it was for one year part-time while he was in college and he says while he taught there he worried about the munchkins packing heat. 3-year-olds with guns. if you think you've got to work hard to believe the mark kirk for senate campaign, just think how hard they're working to churn out their explanations. and the kirk staff has kept it

up now posting what they are calling a correction to the "new york times" story, quote, before and after publication, the kirk campaign made it clear that the clause brightest lights of our country's future referenced nursery school kids in ithica, new york, while theç bore scrutiny clause referenced a few kids at milestone school in london. as we told the reporter mr. kirk taught mainly english and some foreign students at milestone. a few of the kids he taught came from difficult family backgrounds and he was surprised by what they saw at home and regarded as normal behavior. "the times" mistake is unfortunate but sometimes mistakes do happen. "the times" mistake. he'd know about the mistakes thing. mark kirk, you are amazing. the newest spin if you can follow this is that mark kirk was not blaming the 3-year-olds for inviting suspicion about their concealed carry status at nursery school. he was blaming the british middle school students for inviting that suspicion. at a time when the number of armed british households was roughly on par with the

population of real leprechauns in ireland. as of this evening the "new york times" has not backed down on its original story about mr. kirk blaming the toddlers for the guns. if they do retract their reporting we will let you know. meanwhile we'll continue to enjoy congressman mark kirk and all his amazing, amazing stories. ♪ [ male announcer ] imagination. it's the most powerful resource on earth. and at ge, we're using it, right now, to create innovative technology that will improve the health of our economy...

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yesterday in the senate was seer sucker thursday. i'm just warning you about that so you don't get alarmed when i show you a clip from what happened yesterday in the senate. here's the scene. it is seersucker thursday in the senate. republicans have already been blocking a vote on a package of unemployment and state aid benefits for weeks. but finally democrats think they have the 60 votes they need to get the bill past the republican filibuster. turns out they don't. in fact they only have 56. democrat ben nelson of nebraska and joe lieberman of connecticut vote with republicans to continue filibustering a vote on unemployment and an emergency state aid. then senate majority leader harry reid takes to the floor with a handful of very popular, badly needed pieces of the bill including the extension of unemployment benefits in anç attempt to try to get something

passed or at least voted on before the night's end. on hand to object in a terrifying seersucker suit was republican minority leader mitch mcconnell looking as if he is on his way to a garden party via horse drawn buggy to discuss the cut of president chester a. arthur's gib. >> for the moment i object. we just got this a few moments ago. for the moment i object. for today i object. >> mr. president, we're still working together on a bipartisan basis to try to figure out how to go forward on all of these items but for the moment i object. >> the nation faces the highest rate of unemployment since the 1930s and unless ben nelson and joe lieberman and all the republicans let this extension bill pass more than a million unemployed americans will see their benefits run out by the end of the month. it does all seem a lot cheerier in seersucker though don't you think? joining us now is senator debby stabenow democrat of michigan. thank you very much for coming on the show. nice to see you. >> it's great to be with you.

>> is there a new strategy for getting this extension passed before the end of the month? the stakes are so high. a million people potentially losing unemployment. >> rachel, first let me say on behalf of a million people in michigan and over 15 million people around the country i'm outraged about this. you know, as you know, this has been a pingpong. people have been used as pawns in a political fight now for the last year and a half. real people trying to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head. i've had it. this is really outrageous. we are going to do a couple things next week. there is one more time, they are indicating that they're willing to put together this broader bill, but if not we have to move ahead and vote on extending unemployment benefits. and in my judgment we need to do that separately. and i think that everyone watching your program, everyone who is touched by this or cares about americans in this country

who want to work but can't find a job, ought to be flooding phone lines and e-mails to express outrage about what is happening. this has happened over and over again. in the last year and a half since president obama and the democrats took the majority. and too many people in my state are on aç rollercoaster now. every single day emotionally trying to figure out what's going on. a lot of them are going to school. they're living off unemployment benefits just to keep a roof over their head and take care of their families and they're e-mailing me saying, now what do i do? what do i do? i'm trying to go back to school. you told me to go back to school. i'm doing that. but i need a little bit more help to be able to get this done so i can go out and try to find a new profession. >> senator, in terms of the tactics here, last fall when republicans were holding up an unemployment extension package then they were doing it by adding unrelated amendments to it. >> right. >> you said at the time that that had become a tactic for

republicans. >> it has. >> i expect that that will be part of the way they continue to object to this. how do you fight that tactic? >> we're going to have to slog our way through it like we did last fall. it took us a month to get through that with objection after objection. by the way, we're up to 234 objections and filibusters which is unheard of in the history of our country. it took us a month. here's the bad part, the part that, the cynical part that makes me so angry. it took a month last fall to slog through this and then almost every republican voted for the bill. they were holding it up to try to stop health care at the time. now they're just trying to hold it up to stop us from getting a a broader jobs bill done which by the way has a provision to stop incentives for taking jobs overseas and it also has a provision that would raise additional money from oil companies for the oil spill liability trust fund so i find it interesting when the congressman from texas was apologizing to bp yesterday, his

republican colleagues in the senate were protecting big oil and stopping a 47 cent fee on every barrel of oil which is $70 or $80 to be able to put into a liability fund to clean up the mess. >> senator shall the republicans who have objected to this when they make their case in public say that they just don't want anymore spending, that the deficit is too high, that government spending is out of control, and that they just want some fiscal discipline and that's why they're saying no to things like this. what is your response to that argument? >> a couple things. first of all i don't think we should take seriously a lecture from the people that created this deficit trying to now lecture usç about deficits numr one. number two, we're never going to get out of deficit if we have more than 15 million people out of work in this country. the way to get out of deficit is to put people back to work, to have people contributing to the economy, contributing to the tax base, buying things as

consumers. and the final thing i would say is what i said to a republican colleague on the floor yesterday. will they have that same test when they bring to the floor another big tax cut for the estate tax for a few hundred families in this country? they're going to bring an estate tax cut for a few hundred families and i bet they don't care if that's paid for but when it's people out of work in this country, working class people, middle class people, bread winners who can't bring home any bread right now? suddenly the rules change. if there was ever a disaster in this country and that's how we pay for this with disaster assistance, i consider 15 million people out of work a disaster. >> senator debbie stabenow democrat of michigan, thank you so much for your time tonight. obviously this is a real passion for you. really appreciate your time. >> thanks. we live in a time when the whole world can watch world cup soccer simultaneously. half can complain that the sound of the plastic trumpets everybody blows during world cup matches is deafening and we live

in a time when through advanced audio frequency geekery someone can figure out how to reduce or eliminate that specific sound from your tv machine. a moment of geek including a home made demonstration next. or, maybe you want to help improve our schools? whatever you want to do, members project from american express can help you take the first step. vote, volunteer or donate for the causes you believe in at membersproject.com. take charge of making a difference.

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what do you mean second amendment remedies? >> thank you. >> second amendment remedies? anything? we kept asking into the parking lot but received no answer. >> why won't you answer what second amendment remedies means? nothing at all? >> i don't know. >> it's a simple question. >> sharron angle accidently meets a real reporter. it does not go well. footage ahead.

tonight's moment of geek is about the world cup. even if you don't know anything about soccer the one story from the world cup in south africa that everybody knows about is the vuvuzela, the plastic trumpet everybody is blowing in the stands. when tens of thousands of these are playing at the same time it creates this weird constant buzzing sound. you can hear it in all the footage. that's the vuvuzela. the vuvuzela is loud. okay? it's really loud. some would say distractingly loud or even infuriatingly loud, hit somebody loud, for god's sake turn that off loud. i've asked kent to come and demonstrate just how loud it is with this vuvuzela courtesy of mike g. from our crew. thanks, mike. go ahead, kent.

you see how loud that is? i mean, how are you supposed to concentrate with this going? can you see where this would be a big problem? thank you, kent. thank you, kent. thank you, kent! thanks! kent! thank you. >> thank you. appreciate it. ah! if you are sick of that sound when you are watching videos of the world cup the ingenious folks at life hacker.com have come up with a solution to make it go away. the vuvuzela creates sound waves on a specific frequency which is measured in hertz. the geeks who figured this out determined that the horn's musical note is about a b flat which they measured at 233 hertz. in addition to that there are harmonics at successive octaves that fill outç the sound. so the idea is to use a filter. in our case we used something called a notch filter that blocks those specific frequencies there buy blocking most of the sound made by the horns. we tried it. here is a clip from today's

u.s./slovenia game. just for a baseline this is without any filter. now with the notched filter blocking out the frequencies we selected listen to this. quieter, right? filter off. filter on. thank you, gods of the internets for this brilliant, high tech solution for filtering out the sound made by a 90 cent piece of plastic. woo hoo! what you did at this morning's meeting? that was pure poetry. stop it. hello? you spotted a million dollar accounting error that no one else noticed.

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news media's changing really fast right now. we are shifting away from single news programs and publications designed to serve mass audiences toward a more ato omized system, where people seek out what they want to watch and read and

there's no expectation that rn is watching the same thing. for those of us who are in this business, recognizing the self-segregation that's going on among audiences honestly makes it sort of a fun challenge to try to get people to cross borders and step outside their comfort zone. hi, conservative viewers. i know you're out there. i'm genuinely glad you're here. i hope you stay. we all know for most people, people like to watch and read folks who they agree with. among a real or imagined community of other viewers or readers who mostly agree withç them, too. although this change in the way we consume news is much lamented, i never thought it was particularly tragic. it offers as many opportunities for diversity and depth in media as it does things to worry about. but one of the things to worry about as media splinters like it has is that candidates who get used to staying inside their idealogical media bubble of choice in this day and age won't necessarily know that they sound crazy to people who aren't inside that bubble with them. and that's the cue for sharron

angle, who has a record that probably does sound great when it's typed in all capital letters in a blog comment at i'm clinging to my guns dot u.s. when she took her john boich society approved stand against flouride in water and said she wanted to outlaw alcohol and three times this year threatened that if conservatives didn't get what they want from this next election, they might turn to their guns to get what she want. when she came up with her positions and what she was going to campaign on, it probably sounded great on the far reaches of right wing talk radio. but now that she's the republican party's senate candidate, she's fighting to stay within those confines, stay within the confines only of the right wing media and it turns out it's a hard fight. since being elected, sharron angle has not only been turning down interviews with liberal jerks like me, she's also completely blanked the mainstream press. she has only done softball interviews with conservative

media, fox and friends, the rush limbaugh show, human events, the national review. here's the problem. if you're used to only talking to people like that who agree with you, accidentally coming into contact with a real reporter from just regular mainstream local media can be quite a shock to the system. i want you to watch this amazing local footage. this is from the cbs affiliate in las vegas. the reporter here is nathan bacha. >> now, for weeks, viewers had given us questions they wanted answered. they want to know where angle stands on social security and about her desire to abolish federal environmental programs. we asked those questions and more. here are her answers. as sharron angle greeted supporters at stony's restaurant in las vegas, we approached her to ask her about her social security plan. transitioning out, an end to social security and medicare. why do you want to eliminate it for younger folks, because your plan calls for transitioning out. >> you have believed the harry reid lie.

>> your own website says transition out of the program. what does that mean? >> transition into a personalized account. >> but ending social security as we know it? >> personalized social security account that they can't raid. >> stock market almost crashed in 2008. millions of seniors would have -- >> you're putting words into my mouth from harry reid and i want you to be very clear on this. i'm here to save social security. harry reid is here -- >> by transitioning out of it. >> harry reid is here to bankrupt social security. >> we then asked angle about her quote, calling for the elimination of the environmental protection agency in the midst of the oil spill. >> why do you want to eliminate the epa when we're in our worst environmental disaster in this country? >> where are you getting these questions, the issues are not about the epa -- >> but you want to eliminate the epa, correct? >> the issues are homes here in nevada. he is trying to make this a

campaign about me but where's harry? go ask harry. >> your own -- >> please go ask harry about the epa and why they have failed. >> and why you want to eliminate. >> why they have failed to do what they needed to do in the gulf. >> angle walked away when we asked about her website once advocating withdrawal from the united nations. she then gave a 20-minute long interview to conservative radio talk show host roger hedgecock and she then said she would answer four questions. but refused to answer this question. if this congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking towards those second amendment remedies. >> thank you so much. >> what do you mean when you say second amendment remedies? >> thank you. >> second amendment remedies, anything? >> we kept asking into the parking lot but received no answer. >> why won't you answer what second amendment remedies means? nothing at all? it's a simple question. >> reaction from the angle campaign was swift.

their spokesperson called this reporter an idiot and another term that cannot be repeated on television. the spokesperson did say he would detail angle's positions. we asked him to explain it on camera but he refused toç expln it on camera. >> reporter nathan bacha also posted more footage online of sharron angle running away from him and refusing to answer questions about repeated warnings that conservatives will turn to second amendment remedies, that they will turn to guns to get what they want if she doesn't beat harry reid in november. >> what do you mean, second amendment remedies? second amendment remedies, anything? >> we kept asking into the parking lot, but received no answer. >> why won't you answer what second amendment remedies means? nothing at all. it's a simple question. >> our friend john rolston, another great local nevada reporter, today tweeted a link to this footage with the hash tags not fox news and welcome home. my favorite part of all of this, though, is the epa issue. >> why do you want to eliminate the epa when we're in our worst

environmental disaster in this country? >> where are you getting these questions? >> where are you getting these questions. ma'am, we're getting them from your record where you said you want to abolish the environmental protection agency. question, is there a federal department/cabinet position you would support eliminating. answer, yes, those cuts should include the department of education, department of energy, environmental protection agency, irs, blah, blah, blah. you proposed eliminating the epa. it is your position, sharron angle. >> where are you getting these questions? >> where are you getting these questions. these aren't the questions i want to be asked. this isn't what i get asked about on conservative talk radio shows and fox news. you're not doing it right. nathan bacha from klas in las vegas, you're doing it right in the age of atomized media and the huge conservative radio and tv and blog echo chamber, sharron angle is an amazing test case. can a very, very, very right